The Environmental Impact of Collisions with Large Space Structures: The Case of Solar Power Satellites

Abstract

This paper presents the initial steps toward developing a dedicated pipeline for modeling the collision and breakup of large space structures, with a particular focus on Solar Power Satellites (SPS) in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO). In the last decades, interest in assessing the advantages and feasibility of deploying SPS in orbit has grown significantly—alongside concerns about the potential risks they pose due to their important size. However, very little research has examined in detail the actual effects these structures could have in terms of collisions and debris generation. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop an accurate yet computationally efficient method for estimating the consequences of impacts involving large space structures, ranging from minor to catastrophic collisions. This approach will enable seamless integration into space environment evolutionary models (such as NESSY or MOCAT), ensuring a more comprehensive assessment of their long-term impact on the space environment. When considering collisions between large space structures and objects ranging from sub-millimetre fragments to geostationary satellites’ size, the current NASA Standard Breakup Model (SBM) may beinsufficient for accurately capturing the resulting fragment distribution. This is primarily because it usually overestimates smaller debris (on the millimetre scale) and is not designed to account for very large structures. In the existing literature, the effects of hypervelocity impacts are typically studied in detail through experimental collision tests in physical facilities or numerical simulations using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) or Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis. These approaches are however computationally expensive and inadequate for the integration of algorithms. On the other side, semi-empirical models allow to provide estimates based on real experiment data and better generalise about different scenarios. This research reports the first steps towards developing a semi/analytical based breakup model specifically tailored for large space structures with a focus on SPSs.